The Boy Who Was Loved
by Little Miss Banana
Summary: Ronald Weasley isn't the same as his family. He's alone, and abused, and hurt in his head. He's only eleven, and they're killing him with words. Words and feelings. But someday he'll learn what love is, someone will help him. Someday he'll know. (Weasley bashing, except Bill, almost a Severitus, but with Ron instead of Harry. Verbal abuse. No Romance. Purely family. Rated T.


Prologue

The boy watched from the shadows, his gaze unending. His brothers were playing, laughing together. When he asked to join in, they sniggered, and yelled at him to go away- they didn't play with babies.

He'd gone in search of his eldest brother- at this time he was going to be in his final year at school. The young man was studying, and had entertained the little boy for a while- but he had work to complete, for his N.E.W.T.'s, and he hadn't much time for his baby brother.

It seemed no one really did, these days.

The young child had tried to play with his sister, but she was only five. Five isn't very much compared with six, and she told on him all the time. She was Mummy's baby.

So he was by himself, on the swing-set, watching his siblings play catch. After a while, they went inside, but he kept swinging. Higher, and higher, and higher he went, giggling in the perfect portrayal of childish innocence. His shrieks of laughter echoed through the fields, rich with corn. it was, he believed, a very beautiful setting. He could take time to relish in it's beauty, he reasoned, because he wasn't playing stupid games like catch, or quidditch. So maybe he was better on his own.

It was dusk- the sun was setting, and a strange pink haze had settled over the fields, and the strange home in front of him. He leapt into the air, the force from the swing propelling him, relishing in the fact that he was flying- and he really was flying. He laughed, feeling the magic flow through his body, sending shivers up his spine. He could do magic, and perhaps that was best of all. His older twin brothers had not yet, and it was just last week when his other brother did- though his mother had commented on how surprisingly late it was.

He landed on the rain soaked grass- it had been showering a while, and the young boy was just as wet as the sodden ground. He lay back, the water weighing him down, pulling him into the mossy heaven.

It was always the right thing, mused the child, to look on the bright side of the world. If his siblings had not let him play catch, if his brother had not had work to do, and if his sister had not been five, then perhaps he would not be here, lying in his own paradise.

A paradise soon shattered. His fretful mother was calling, and he traipsed back to the house, she yelled at him. "You ungrateful boy! Come here, and get changed! You don't deserve dinner!"

Or that was the gist of it, anyway.

His mother never liked him as much as the others anyway, he easily bored her. He could occupy himself in his own paradise, and there he'd never be lonely. He was just a little boy. Nobody else could ever experience his imagination, and nobody else could ever understand him.

He wished he had stayed outside. If he had, he supposed, he could pretend his family loved him- he wasn't always sure that they did. Maybe his oldest brother did, but that was it, he decided. Nobody else did- and perhaps he was right. The poor little boy was quite unloved.

It was being in the middle that did it- or maybe being near the bottom, but not quite. Not the oldest and not the youngest. Not the best behaved, not the funniest, and not the coolest. Not the one obsessed with dragons and not the girl.

Just him.

As he lay in bed that night, his little mind started whirring, busying itself with evil wizards and witches, and King Arthur, and Merlin. He got up, and padded towards his window, silently opening it, and climbing out, onto the rough oak branches beside it. It was convenient, because he love the darkness of night, and the outsideness, of being outside. It was convenient, that he should be able to climb out, into the depth of the dark, gnarled oak tree.

He sat next to a beautiful owl in the middle of the trunk. He stroked her glossy, pearly feathers, as he whispered to her.

"I'm different. But I think I like it."

The owl hooted softly, and landed on his pajama-clad shoulder, as if in agreement.

"They don't like it, though."

The snowy owl burrowed into his neck affectionately- this was, perhaps, some of the only affection the small boy had really ever gotten.

"I don't mind. I can be better than them, and that's what counts." He held the little owl to his face- the wind was chilly that night. "I'm already magical, do you know what this means?" The owl, which he'd lovingly christened Mumi, nipped his ear. "I'm more powerful. Than the rest I mean." He carried on talking, because though Mumi was just an owl, she was clever, and she loved him enough to understand him. "I can do magic when I'm six. But the rest of my brother's didn't do it till they were ten." He crinkled his nose. "I don't know about the twins, they haven't yet though, and I have and I'm younger." He yawned. "Daddy hasn't got a very good job. We're very poor, you know." Murmuring one last thing to the owl, he stood to make his way back across the branch. "Daddy never really got it right, did he? He married Mother, and he got a bad job, and he had seven children. We're so many, and I'm missed out. I'm going to do it right though." His pledge rippled across the stars. "I'm going to do it all right. Nobody can stop me."

He climbed back into his tiny bed. He was growing too long for it, but no-one had noticed.

His exhausted body curled up into a ball, and he let out a long, suffering sigh, before falling asleep, a smile gracing his little, cherub-like face.

Ronald Weasley was different, and he was going to show the world.


End file.
